I often reflect on and gush to others about how much I love our sweet little town. C’ville is a great place to become a parent and to raise children. As a doula, one thing I have learned about Charlottesville is that there are supportive, caring opportunities for prenatal care, labor & delivery, and postpartum support. There are doctors, midwives, hospitals, and birth centers. Yoga classes, meetups, facebook groups, childbirth education, and community gatherings. Wonderful options abound! However, I believe that for more parents-to-be to feel that they are having wonderful birth experiences, these many providers and services need to be working together and communicating amongst themselves about how to better serve birthing people!

This is exactly why I am so very thankful for Laura Salvatierra, Team Coordinator of Maternity Education at Sentara Martha Jefferson Hospital. She gets it! Recently, she created a Labor Support Collaborative to: “encourage all areas of birth support to come together with the common goal of supporting women who choose to have hospital births in the absolute best ways possible”. YES, Laura! That’s exactly what we want too!

So on Monday evening, we gathered with Laura, local doulas, and MJH hospital staff to connect with each other with the purpose of better serving the birthing folks of C’ville. My favorite thing about this gathering was the clear intention to work together to make hospital birth better! Birth workers of all sorts from all corners were welcome, INCLUDING other hospitals. We reviewed some of the hospital’s new policies, which I found to be super helpful. Then, Laura and other nurses from L&D answered some questions from the group. The tone was so supportive and uplifting. It truly felt like we were all there working toward that common goal of making birth experiences better.

A huge and heartfelt THANK YOU to Laura! I deeply appreciate you taking initiative and providing space for these conversations to take place. It is so exciting to know that we will continue to work together in support of beautiful births!